Kevin Rudd
has rekindled his leadership ambitions just 100 days from the election by urging deflated colleagues not to raise the white flag and declining to repeat the pledge he made in March that there were no circumstances under which he would return to the top.

Instead, Mr Rudd put back on the table the prospect of being drafted to the leadership by a large majority of caucus by reverting to the line he gave after his failed leadership coup in February 2012. At the time he vowed not to challenge Prime Minister
Julia Gillard
.

In a forthright appearance on the ABC’s 7.30 program, Mr Rudd said Opposition Leader
Tony Abbott
was a liar, his campaign was constructed on a “tissue of lies’’ and there was no reason why Labor should lose, given the state of the economy.

“We should not be hauling up the white flag,’’ he said.

His interview came at the end of a poor week for the government in which despondency and defeatism became entrenched at all levels.

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Starting on Friday, Mr Rudd will showcase his popularity with visits to the two marginal Labor seats of Corangamite and Corio in the Geelong region, which Labor is at risk of losing. He has further marginal seat visits planned.

On Monday, June 17, Parliament resumes for its final fortnight before it rises before the September 14 election.

When asked if voters had stopped ­listening to Ms Gillard, Mr Rudd sidestepped, saying it was the job of “all of us" to sell Labor’s message every day until election day.

Aim to rally the caucus

“We have a phenomenally strong record on the economy. On the basis of our economic record, deserve re-election. Interest rates, lower than under the Howard government. Unemployment, lower than under the Howard government,’’ he said.

“We managed to keep the economy out of recession, we have grown the economy instead and on top of that we’ve managed to do so with among the lowest debt and deficit levels across the developed world.

“I’m going to take the argument up to the Australian people wherever I can.’’

Sources close to Mr Rudd said the key intention of the interview was to rally the caucus and show there was still hope.

Mr Rudd said it was untrue that Labor’s current predicament was caused by him and his supporters undermining Ms Gillard and the government.

“It is completely wrong for people in our national political life to be on about constructing alibis for defeat when our responsibility on behalf of the people we represent and the Parliament of Australia is to not just devise a strategy for victory but to implement that strategy as well."

After the bungled coup on March 21, when
Simon Crean
called for a spill but Mr Rudd declined to challenge, Mr Rudd ruled out ever again becoming Labor leader under any circumstances, including being drafted.

“There are no circumstances under which I will return to the leadership of the Labor Party in the future,’’ he said.

Rudd pressed three times on pledge

“It’s time for the Australian Labor Party to unite under Julia Gillard, unite totally."

But when pressed three times on this pledge on Thursday night, Mr Rudd sidestepped and instead reverted to his February 2012 pledge.

“My position hasn’t changed since ­February last year,’’ he said when asked whether he was still a contender. “Last time I said in February of 2012 that I would not be challenging the Prime Minister.

“The Prime Minister won that caucus ballot by two to one, it was a convincing and strong win. I’ve accepted the result."

Mr Rudd said Mr Abbott’s pledge to stop the boats and turn them back to Indonesia was an “absolute lie’, as was his claim “this country has a debt and deficit crisis’’. He said after 19 years as “the most extreme, right-wing’’ member of the Liberal Party, Mr Abbott was now trying to fool people by wearing blue ties and pretending to be politically moderate.

One key Gillard supporter did not envisage Mr Rudd having the support to make a comeback and said that even if Labor changed leaders now, given the state of the polls, it would not win the election.

The MP said Mr Rudd would have fewer supporters now than he had before the bungled coup in March because of the people he burnt when he refused to run.

But a Rudd supporter disputed this, saying the level of despondency and urgency was such that it remained plausible for Labor to change during the last sitting fortnight at the end of this month.

Another said the behaviour of one of Mr Rudd’s key supporters,
Joel Fitzgibbon
, earlier this week in which he mocked the government’s electoral prospects on breakfast television, should not be rewarded. “Not in a million years you’d reward this sort of behaviour,’’ he said.

Mr Rudd is understood to be upset at Mr Fitzgibbon, believing such antics entrench party divisions and cruel any lingering prospect he may have of returning.